


Karkat and His Complicated Relationship With Romance

by officialkarkat (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (Also trans but that isn't said in the fanfic. But just know he is trans), Also bisexual because bi fucking rights babey, F/M, Karkat is demiaroace because I said so and I am right, M/M, POV Karkat Vantas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22783618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/officialkarkat
Summary: You've always had a complicated relationship with romance. Sure, you're really into the idea of it, but just how easily do you fall in love?
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Terezi Pyrope/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	Karkat and His Complicated Relationship With Romance

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you have a very complicated relationship with romance.

For as long as you can remember, you have always loved the idea of romance, hell, you seem to obsess over romcoms quite a lot. Regardless of how bad they may be, you can’t help but enjoy the cheesey-ness that is always displayed in romcoms, plus, there’s some bits to laugh at as well. You’ve also always been quite desperate to experience romance, you loved the idea of it. But for some reason, you’ve found that you tend to find it harder to actually get a hold of it compared to the people around you.

They’d talk about celebrity crushes and you’ll have no idea why they’d find any of them remotely attractive. They’d talk about how they look for certain things in people but you don’t understand why that has to matter. You’d see the rise of dating apps and find them confusing, because you didn’t understand why anyone would just look at a photo of someone with a brief description and decide based off of that alone that they might be a good partner for you. You’ve never been able to look at someone and decide they’re attractive. You never understood why someone would participate in one night stands. It’s not like you weren’t interested in stuff like that, you just never understood how other people went about it. 

You grew to be insecure about it, due to not knowing anyone who feels the same way as you. You got convinced that it was *you* that's the problem, that *you’re* not normal, and that you *should* be doing these things. You internalized these beliefs, and just tried to fit in with the people around you. You already felt othered enough, you wanted to reduce that as much as possible. You began saying you liked certain people or liked certain features, when you really didn’t, but it got to a point where you were convincing yourself that this *was* romance. That this was genuine. That this is what everyone else was experiencing. You had nothing else you could reasonably compare it to.

You acted like you were some expert at romance, and by extension quadrants, almost as a defense mechanism because you actually more felt like you didn’t understand them, but you didn’t want anyone else to know that. You did as much research on quadrants and other related topics as possible, to play up the facade of you being some romance expert. It’s not like you were *lying*, you had genuinely convinced yourself that you were some romance expert, because I mean why wouldn’t you be, you did all of that research, of course you understand it, of course you were feeling this, why wouldn’t you be feeling this? You’re just like any other troll.

You decided one day that you were gonna have a pitch crush on Sollux, it just seemed right to you, he always teased you and you always teased him, of course this meant it had to be pitch. You upped the teasing a little, and upped your reactions to his teasing, because that’s how it always was in the romcoms you watched. You tried to emulate them, because that’s what you felt like you had to do for it to be truly pitch, of which you convinced yourself that it was. After a bit, he began upping his own teasing, making jabs at you that were more obviously pitch than before. You weren’t sure what to exactly do with this, so you just started playing along, after all, wasn’t this what you wanted?

Then, one day, after having a regular conversation with Terezi, you realized something. You *felt something* about her. It felt a lot more intense than you’ve ever felt about anyone else before. It didn’t take that long for you to realize that it was romantic attraction you were feeling, but that quickly brought up the question of what did that mean about all of the other times you thought you were feeling this? You, not wanting to think about this for too long, quickly came to a conclusion that let you sweep it under the rug. It was obviously just that this was more intense than the other times and obviously had no deeper meaning than that.

You’ve known Terezi for a very long time, she was one of the first people you met online back when you were maybe 4 sweeps old, yet for some reason only now did you start feeling something for her. Because of this, you found this difficult to approach, as it felt a bit awkward to just get a crush on your best friend out of what felt like nowhere. You tried to think about what quadrant you were feeling this in, realizing it wasn’t as obvious as romcoms had made it out to be. You came to the conclusion that this must be flushed at the time, but you would soon realize that pinning down a quadrant was a lot harder than it sounded.

Due to being unsure how to approach it, you ended up not approaching it, at least, directly. To Terezi, it became obvious just how exactly you felt about her, because let’s be honest, you’re not as subtle as you think. Luckily, she seemed to feel the same way, as she started teasing you (in a flushed way), making a couple of innuendos here and there, and just generally acting more flirty with you. Unlike with Sollux, you found this a lot easier to deal with, you began doing the same things back, not at all having any second thoughts. This led you to just quietly abandon those feelings for Sollux. 

You had noticed that the teasing between you and Terezi sometimes went in more of a pitch direction, and sometimes you’d have conversations that’d come off as pale. This, obviously, confused the both of you, because you weren’t sure what quadrant you wanted her in, and she wasn’t sure what you wanted out of a relationship. This would turn out to be a gigantic mess for the both of you, your emotional baggage not exactly helping here either. Terezi wasn’t the type of person who’d find that easy to deal with.

Around this time, you also began playing the SGRUB beta, which was a whole mess of its own, but that’s mostly irrelevant. We’ll just stick with what *was* relevant. After playing through the game and creating the kids’ universe, the Jack Noir from said universe then came along to fuck over your entire session, making completing your session impossible. You and the others then decided to use the Trollian client to begin messaging past versions of the kids that would end up fucking over your session, to try to prevent it from ever happening. This, naturally, led to you meeting John.

You at some point had decided to use the Trollian client to watch over the entirety of John’s life, and quickly grew jealous of how privileged John was growing up compared to you. Due to your whole mess of a romantic situation with Terezi, and your now abandoned feelings towards Sollux, you were more than desperate to find someone else to have a crush on. At this moment, you decided you were going to have a pitch crush on John, because that was of course the most logical step to take with this information.

You began to make subtle pitch jabs at John, which he seemed to interpret in a more flushed way, to your dismay. It was through this that you learned of the concept of “human sexualities”, though you found the concept of this utterly useless and unnecessary. Because of this, however, you also learned that, just because of your gender, apparently, John wouldn’t be interested. Oh well. You decided to just give up on that whole idea after realizing it probably wasn’t ever gonna happen, though, to your surprise, it was much easier to “get over” than you thought it would’ve been.

During this whole John situation, your other situation with Terezi wasn’t going much better. Due to all of the shit happening in your session, adding to your emotional baggage, your relationship with her became very strained. You eventually became a bit too much for Terezi to handle, so she started focusing her attention more on other people. You were never technically official, so you couldn’t get too upset about it, but it did hurt a little. Though, oddly enough, you found this significantly harder to deal with than you did with getting over John. You weren’t sure why at the time, but frankly, you were not in a good enough mindset to even think about that coherently and not have all of the thoughts get muttled in your head.

Later on, you found yourself hanging out more with Dave. Before this, you would say that you two were pretty good acquaintances, but it wasn’t until now that you two actually started taking each other more seriously, and eventually becoming friends. Now, you were on a pretty long meteor trip with him, and you didn’t have many other people to talk to at all, and neither did he, so you two decided to talk a lot more than you probably would’ve in any other circumstance. 

Over the years, you two would grow closer, you would become more willing to be vulnerable around each other, saying things to each other you wouldn’t say in front of anyone else. To your surprise, this ended up in you getting a crush on Dave. 2 years ago, you wouldn’t have even considered the idea, but now you felt so close to him, closer than you’ve felt with anyone before. You could tell, basing it off of past emotions, that this was once again romantic attraction. You were actually in denial for quite awhile, considering out of all people *Dave* was the one you got a crush on, though you did learn to accept it. Given Dave’s passing comments on human sexuality, you also got the idea that he probably wouldn’t be interested, similar to John. But you couldn’t get over this. 

You didn’t *want* to get over this, now that you’ve come to accept it, you don’t want to lose it again. Given you’re quite desperate for romance, of course you would want to cling onto this as much as possible, however this contrasted how you felt about John. You decided to not address it directly, and kept business as usual. Though, over time, you would come to realize that Dave doesn’t seem to have much different feelings for you, which honestly surprised you. But you still didn’t want to make a move too soon, so you tried to keep things natural between the two of you.

Eventually, after another year or so, for the both of you it becomes too obvious what has come between the two of you, so naturally you two began dating. And you were happy. You were initially worried over labeling what quadrant it was with Dave, but he assured you not to worry about it. You could just human romance it, you didn’t have to follow quadrants just because you’re a troll. That was a bit hard to accept at first, but you eventually learned to embrace it.

You’ve had a complicated romantic history, but you got there in the end. You found the easiest way to describe your experience as being a hopeless romantic, but only in the sense that you’re heavily favourable of romance and have always found it appealing, but you also learned that doesn’t inherently mean you fall in love easily, either. Due to spending so much time around humans, especially now on Earth C, and more terms relating to attraction and identity becoming more available for everyone to access, you came to find a label that explains your experience. A label that helps you feel less alone in how you feel, less weird or otherwise not normal. 

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are demiaroace.


End file.
